2011-2014. The original blog that got it all started. It represents reflections I had and sharing I did, during a time period in my life, freshly post autism diagnosis, worsening illness, though I wasn't yet clear on things. I was trying to process and going through a lot of hard learning. There's some good stuff in here, which helped others, and there's also some stuff that no longer reflects my situation and/or evolved insights. Please read with this in mind.

Thursday, September 25, 2014

Entry 63: Thought processes

I am not a “professional with a degree.” However,
I’m an expert in my own right, with how I’ve sought to find others who’ve had
consistent experiences to what I have had. I know the way my body is quite
well, though my sensory system can play tricks on me and can be either
heightened, or seemingly blocked. I still have strong, general intuition about
my body, though.

Sometimes the sensory stuff can confuse it, but
ultimately I've known best how to help myself when I "play around"
with herbs, foods, supplements and whatnot. I apply what I know about what they
do, of course, with my instincts...and that's a whole other blog/video for one
day.

Doctors, regarding this, often shut me down. That's
predictable though. This is how I’ve been able to try and manage my fibro
issues, though it can be difficult, time consuming, energy consuming and
costly.

In retrospect, my mind is a little more difficult
for me to understand sometimes. I look for patterns among clues, and connect
the dots. Sometimes there are many different variations, because there are many
different “avenues” that a chain of interrelations can go down.

I then apply new, unique and undesignated
experiences to older precedents, to try and see how it is that something could
be like this because it’s a combination of “that, morphed in this way, applied
to this similar older version that existed before.”

I myself learn and process in different, unique
ways. I like to read in order to get the main questions answered, the Why,
What, When, Where and How. I'm autistic and merely hyperlexic, I'm good with applying words as "code." It doesn't always sound the way it's expected to sound, I guess.

This means, I’m strong and precocious with words, but
I treat them like numbers and patterns. I apply them in contexts based on the
patterns I see, using my working memory, and from the answers and clues that I
find. I have a strong working memory script, because as a child I incessantly
observed the way people spoke. It often was from movies and TV.

This is why I can sometimes sound a bit like I’m
acting. I am doing this to communicate though. It doesn’t mean I’m lying. This
is a common misinterpretation, especially when it comes to females on the
autism spectrum. Sometimes the males are like this too. Its a coping strategy,
in order to "speak this language that isn't' our mother tongue." It
really shouldn't be perverted into anything else but that. Sometimes people can
be so cynical, without open minds and hearts. It's hard on our community, and
it needs to change.

The way I think is what produces my own unique
theories and inquisitive conclusions. It produces my “battle plan” and
strategies to try and cope with some very challenging life hardships, in which
I face on a daily basis. I try my best with what I have. Sometimes I do so
well that I fly under the radar in my suffering. Then, when I appear to suffer
because I'm folding, its wondered why. It's judged harshly.

My communication can sometimes be taken out of
context by neurotypicals, though I try hard, and edit greatly in order to
maximize the likelihood that I’ll be reasonably understood. It's hard work you
know. I need to pre plan social interactions, in order to pre-script at least
the gist of what I’m going to say. I often do this without even knowing I'm
doing it. It's a second nature survival instinct, a honed skill.

This doesn’t mean I’m planning a “song and dance.”
This doesn't mean I'm calculated. I have to figure out how I’m going to get
across what I want to and mean to say, in a way that is likely to be best
understood. This can really drain my energy, sometimes. I only have a certain
amount of "forks" before I need to shut down, and recharge. I am
referring to “forks” as that is what my friend and I measure autistic mental
energy to "translate."

It's like the spoon theory, which was created for
physical illness. The spoon theory resembles a task, like doing the laundry,
using a spoon or two. Well, a short phone conversation is a fork; a long
meeting with a bunch of people may be a few of them. Same kind of thing. Also,
with things like fibromyalgia, spoons and forks can sometimes overlap. When I
try to "borrow" a fork, just like when one tries to
"borrow" a spoon; there can be consequences.

For example, if one tried to borrow a spoon by
drinking a caffeinated beverage, or taking a painkiller, so they get "get
on with doing their laundry" they can crash later, they can harm their
stomach, things like that. If one tried to borrow a fork in the same way, they
can start getting overly verbal and chasing their words, frustrated with this,
overloaded; and this can all result things like emotional meltdown or physical
crash and total shut down which may last days.

I can enjoy socializing to a certain degree,
especially when it’s in a special interest area…but I can get very burnt out
too. Due to my fibromyalgia and affects on the brain, it's exacerbated my
differences in communication. I find writing a bit easier. This is because I
can take time to edit and structure it, of course.

I am both a fact seeker and a truth seeker. The
latter means, I think outside the box and don’t take the fact alone at complete
face value. I see fact as only information to base things on, then I form my
own questions, opinions and views. However, I like to base things on fact
first. I don’t like to put forth something I can’t corroborate in some way or
another.

For this reason, I have been searching out articles
that are most clear and concise, and impressively up to date. I like to try and
corroborate both my points and theories, to some degree. Sometimes those
articles offer only a clue into what I’m saying; sometimes they echo it.

It’s hard for me to broaden my focus; I have to go
through each step at a time. My thoughts move so quickly I can get jumbled up
if I don’t. Actually, I'm starting to think my narrow focus tendency is a way
of coping with seeing not just the big picture...but also the
"massive" picture. This is very similar to ADD, with the "inattentive"
versus "hyper focus." In this way, I can see why milder, insidious
cases of autism get passed off as ADD. In fact, they may be very similar
things. The traits can overlap.

I often “edit” myself after writing massive bodies,
and then I cut them down to make "sense" after. This is just the way
that I think and iterate ideas. I have to write this massive equation, and then
try to simplify it. Like I said, I don’t know if I fully understand the way my
mind works at this time. I’d love to one day learn more, through professional
evaluation by those experienced in autism. For now, I’ve determined that I’m a
pattern thinker first.

I thought I was visual, but the “visions” move so
quickly…so they’re more like patterns. Artistic yes, but they’re patterns and
still logical. I’m not a verbal thinker first, though I can be verbal, I have
to translate from patterns. It takes a lot of work to do it, but I often need
to do this…even for me. That’s the basic gist of how I think. I know
many autistic people could likely relate to this.